Let's get this (b)log rolling

Today, a thought occurred to me. Among America's elite caste, which the powerful Sith Lord Darth Moldbug refers to as the Brahmins, there is a certain wistfulness for the simple, the rustic, and the primitive. Seminal Brahmin works, such as Walden extoll the virtues of simple living, and it is many a young Progressive's dream to attain status, and then eventually secure it by living in the woods in a log cabin not unlike Abraham Lincoln's (few Progressives I know would feel rebuked by this comparison). It is all the rage among that caste to tend a backyard garden, even if the tomatoes and strawberries they grow are more disease-prone, not as fresh, taste worse, and cost more than those bought from the store (I, too, was a Brahmin once).

I am sure that I don't need to go into detail; one can find in-depth descriptions of all manner of Brahmin proclivities over at SWPL, and even then, it would probably only serve to confirm what most likely readers of this blog already know. How does one live in a Kingdom without knowing its royalty?

But it seems counter-intuitive for the ruling class to want to move backwards, live in a log cabin, grow their own food, and expose themselves to all kinds of unnecessary trouble. Hmmm. Perhaps there is an explanation for this.

One might be tempted to assume this is all part of the Brahmins' collective courtship of the Dalits and Helots via a reinforcing of the idea that "we are like you, we have to deal with the problems you do, and we solve them as simply as you do", but that explanation doesn't hold water for a couple of reasons. Firstly, what Dalit or Helot lives primitively? Despite being underclasses, you will find few of examples of these castes who live in the woods in a log cabin and grow their own food. The second is that these displays are primarily targeted towards other Brahmins. Indeed, Brahmins have become so obsessed with showing off how "simply" they can live to other Brahmins that a simplicity arms race of sorts has developed, resulting in large sections of the "organic/natural/authentic" industry you see today (all sprung up like weeds to feed on the sweet, sweet vanity of our ruling class.).

So, then, what does explain this behavior? Surely, pissing matches are no new thing, but why have the Brahmins chosen to pursue this particular path of showing off, instead of, say, building taller and taller houses, and buying shinier and shinier cars? It's just a guess, but it's one that makes sense the more I think about it: Brahmins are cargo-cultists. There are other examples of this that I am more certain of, but this explanation is particularly elegant: The Brahmins do not understand how social order and personal contentedness are generated, only that they don't have enough of either, and that the people who did (who are all long gone; the war's over, and they lost) lived more primitively than they do now. In fact, Brahmins have taken this to such an extreme as to drive many of their living habits back a hundred years or more. This is seen to them as a validation that they, too, can raise children properly, live in a well-ordered household with many extended relatives who get along, and keep order in the wider world as a whole. Perversely, this has caused them to worship backward cultures that still exist, many of whom are suffering from the most acute ill affects of Progressive world rule. We can see many examples of this in modern media, where Brahmin films about beautiful indigenous African tribes who live off the land and are suddenly thrust into deadly conflicts between warlords and South African mercenaries who have more technology than they, their lives never to be the same, are a dime a dozen. The message here is that technology is the culprit, and that to escape this waking nightmare, the good Brahmin must live as the primitives do, and eschew all things modern and "fake", lest they, too, be corrupted. Of course, the modern Progressive elite never considers that Progressivism is actually the culprit, that the African tribe had a nasty habit of cannibalism before they ever came along, and that the fact that Progressives have technology is entirely incidental.